Paws
by bat-hawk
Summary: Ever since Stiles was born, he's had a bright yellow paw print stamped on the back of his hand. A sterek soulmark AU.
1. Pawprint

Inspired by a sterek soul mark post here (moretomhardy dot tumblr dot com (slash) post/114984712384) on tumblr.

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Mark watching was a common hobby: sit in a public place, watch people walk by, casually check out the emotional health of their soulmates. Hundreds of thousands of books had been written to analyze what the most minescule changes of color might mean on the handprint that everyone wore on their bodies. Stiles mark watched for a slightly different reason than most; he wasn't interpreting colors, he was looking for other people with weird mark mutations to match his own.

Ever since Stiles was born, he had had a bright yellow paw print stamped on the back of his hand.

As one might expect, Stiles had been subjected to a lot of teasing about his soulmark in school. Stiles didn't care all that much. He got teased about a lot of things, and he had done his research on soulmarks early on. Just because his was a pawprint didn't mean his soulmate was a dog (so _there_ , Jackson), and Stiles certainly wasn't the only person around with a weird soulmark. The medical community called it a mutation, and they estimated that around 3% of all people had a soulmark shape mutation. They had no official explanation as to why some people had feathers or hoof tracks or bite marks or a whole host of other shapes rather than handprints. There were a lot of extra-medical theories out there that said a lot of outlandish things, such as having a paw print meant your soulmate was a werewolf, which was obviously ridiculous, however cool that might be. The theory Stiles bought into was that sometimes your soulmate's totem animal appeared in your soulmark, rather than an imprint from their physical body.

Stiles had proudly presented this theory to his parents over the dinner table when he was eight, and he hadn't found a better one since. Dad had put on a skeptical face and said that seemed like a pretty far fetched idea, but Mom had grinned and said she thought it was sweet. Stiles had beamed and stuck his tongue out at Dad.

Stiles had just turned ten when his soulmark started to seriously change colors for the first time. Until then, it had been remarkable in its consistency, as well as for its shape. It had taken brief, irregular detours into pale spring green (delight) or a muddy indigo color (typically sadness), but only for a couple of hours before it returned to its brilliant yellow (freedom, joy, contentment). Now, it flared light pink for hours at a time, almost every day. Stiles looked up the color as soon as it occurred. He was crushed to find it meant affection, romance, and compassion.

It was unusual to start a relationship with someone who wasn't your soulmate, but it wasn't taboo. Sometimes things didn't work out between soulmates. Sometimes it took many years to meet your soulmate. Sometimes your soulmate died. Some people were born without a soulmark at all. Stiles knew his soulmate was older than him, since he'd had his mark since birth, but he'd always assumed it was a small difference, the way it usually was. But if his soulmate was already falling in love? Maybe they'd gotten tired of waiting for Stiles, and made the decision to stop looking for their soulmate.

Stiles' parents did everything they could to comfort him during his bouts of anxiety, but as the weeks wore on, Stiles' mark was pink more often, and the color was getting brighter - closer to real love.

Then came a week in which Stiles' mark bounced between pink and sickly yellow-green (anxiety), until it spent three hours fading to pitch black after school one day.

He watched his mark make the whole transition, sitting huddled in the corner of his room. His father found him there, staring at his mark (he already knew black was for guilt, depression, fear). Dad made noises of reassurance, told him most people went through black periods and made it through just fine. In fact, he said, Stiles' soulmate had probably just broken up with their significant other, based on the mark's colors all week. And wasn't that a good thing, after all?

Stiles wasn't sure. The black on his hand made him sick to look at.

It took nearly two entire weeks for Stiles' mark to change again, and then only to the deepest indigo (sorrow). Still, Stiles was relieved. Some marks never changed color again after hitting black. He ran to show his mother when she got home. She'd been at a funeral for a teenage girl who died in a car crash nearly two weeks ago, but she mustered up some enthusiasm for Stiles nevertheless. His dad was more excited when he got home, tossing Stiles into the air and making him shriek with laughter.

Stiles' mark plunged black every so often, but never for more than a few hours. But it only rarely returned to simple, bright yellow after that. It was vibrant red for a long time, which meant passion, physicality, and competitiveness, and beyond that all of the reds were recovery colors. They were a less healthy type than blue colors at this point, the books told Stiles, but at least it was something. At least it wasn't black.

After another couple of weeks, the mark began to tend towards yellow again, but a deeper, richer color than before. Books were in conflict with each other over what this color meant, so Stiles turned to the internet for his first real foray into Google. The latest thought was that deep yellow meant a lack of attachment, a mellow attitude, and/or satisfaction. Stiles guessed his soulmate was probably feeling the first more than the others, especially as the mark began to flirt with bouts of ugly green (recklessness), and the red and yellow started to mix into a dirty, orange-y brown (self-destructive behavior). A whole host of other colors began to flare up periodically, so many that Stiles almost stopped keeping track. Most lasted only minutes, some for a couple of hours, but he never went longer than an afternoon without the prickle of a color change zinging through his hand. The books and the internet all agreed that was a bad sign (emotional instability, possibly mental illness).

Stiles worried about his soulmate in his free time, but he was starting to gain a measure of popularity at school for more than a weirdly shaped soulmark. Now he was the kid who knew what all the colors meant, and he got a lot of people asking for advice when their marks suddenly changed to bright purple in the middle of class (it meant spiritual awakening). Stiles was starting to hope for something equally ridiculous if only to get rid of the murky, dark colors that covered his hand all the time these days. He'd just about had it with the pitying glances.

It was around this same time that Stiles began to realize his dad had stopped rolling up his sleeves when he came home. His parents liked to sit together on the couch in the evening with their hands over each other's soulmarks, Mom's hand over Dad's forearm, Dad's resting on Mom's thigh just above her knee. They still sat that way, but Dad's sleeve was always covering the mark on his arm. It was beyond rude to ask someone why they were covering their soulmark, but Mom had been acting strange for a long time, now, and Stiles wanted to know what was so bad that it was apparently visible in the color of Dad's soulmark.

Dad sighed heavily when Stiles blurted out the question the next Saturday, all pretense of cheerfulness falling away. Dad sat him down and explained that Mom was sick. Yes, it was serious. No, it wasn't cancer, it was frontotemporal dementia. It might make Mom say weird things, or think weird things were happening. He should tell Dad if she started acting strange. His parents both loved him very much, even if Mom's disease might make it hard for her to show.

Stiles was certain his Dad was holding back, so he did his own research. He quickly learned the most important things. His mom was dying. There was no cure. There was no way to slow the disease down. He knew then why Dad kept his mark covered. It must be losing color as Mom slowly faded away herself. He didn't see Dad's soulmark again for years and years after that.

Pink began to appear in Stiles' mark again, but it was pale and fleeting, never staying more than a few minutes, and always preceded and followed by some of the dirtiest colors in the mark's repertoire. An abusive relationship, Stiles concluded after a few days of research. He worried, of course, but he had a lot of things to worry about right then, and it soon faded to the background.

Mom declined rapidly after Stiles' conversation with Dad. It only took three months until Stiles was standing next to Dad at a graveside, snow flurries sticking to his eyelashes. They had spent Christmas in the hospital only a few days ago. Stiles stared down at the brownish mix of swampy colors swirling slowly on the back of his hand, wondered if his soulmate was seeing something similar on their mark.

Adjusting to life without Mom was easier than it could have been (easier than it should have been) for Stiles. She hadn't really been there for a long time. Dad had a harder time. He had started working more and more as Mom deteriorated, and he didn't stop now. Stiles spent a lot of time at Scott's so he wouldn't be at home alone.

Then came an overcast, dreary day at the end of January. The weak sun had set, and Stiles was waiting for Dad to get home when Stiles' mark suddenly fuzzed white. Stiles stared at it in horror. Everyone knew what white meant (a drugged state, severe disease, horrific trauma, impending death). White meant something so terrible that it caused the mark to lose focus entirely, every color and no color all at once.

Stiles had no idea what to do. He couldn't lose his soulmate, too, not so soon after Mom. He stared at that blank wash of white until he heard Dad's key rattle in the lock. He ran upstairs and skipped dinner; his dad didn't need another problem right now. He sat in his room and stared at his mark until he couldn't breathe. He had his first panic attack that night, although he didn't know that then. He thought he was dying, too, just the next in a long line. He put on a glove once he could breathe again, because he couldn't handle looking at it any more.

The mark was still white the next morning, so Stiles kept the glove on. He got some weird looks in the hallways, since he had always made a point of keeping his strange soulmark uncovered, but most people left him alone. Even Jackson only said, "finally decided to be ashamed about liking dogs?" which didn't even count as an insult in Stiles' book. Scott asked about it, of course, but Stiles said he didn't want to talk about it, and he left it alone.

Dad asked two days later when he noticed. Stiles said his soulmate was obviously unhealthy, and he didn't want to think about it, which had actually been the case for a long while before then. Dad just nodded and shut himself in the study with a bottle.

Stiles had two more panic attacks by himself before he finally had one at Scott's house. Scott told his mother, who told Dad, who started sending Stiles to a therapist. It helped. He showed his therapist his soulmark, and she asked how it had turned white. Stiles told her, and she hummed for a minute and told him there were two likely situations. Since it had turned white all of a sudden, it probably wasn't disease, and because it had been white for several days, it probably wasn't drugs. She guessed it was probably a traumatic event in his soulmate's life, or he had been injured and was comatose. Three days after that first session, a speck of black appeared at the center of the mark and bled outwards for a span of four days until it had covered up the whole mark. Stiles cried with relief when it first appeared; his soulmate wasn't dying. They had gone through something terrible, but they were still alive. They had recovered from black before, and they could do it again.

He didn't take the glove off because now it would rouse people's curiosity again. Black was nearly as bad a white, in most people's opinion, anyways, and Stiles didn't want questions or sympathy. Lots of people kept their marks covered for that reason, according to Google. Dad took him to buy a glove specifically to cover soulmarks on a hand when he asked. It was lightweight and fingerless, and it made writing in class a lot easier.

He showed his now black mark to the therapist the next week, then rattled on about every color it had ever been. Her lips pursed when he told her about the first time it went black, and her face became more and more pinched as Stiles listed off every color his mark had flared afterwards, how after a while every color seemed to be overlaid with a sheen of brown (stress, distraction, obsession, holding desperately onto something), but the only thing she said when Stiles finally got to white was, "When you find your soulmate, I hope you'll think about giving them my information." She handed him a card. "It sounds like they could use somebody to talk to." Stiles nodded and shoved the card into his pocket while the therapist redirected the conversation back to Mom.

After a few more weeks, Stiles' mark faded to a cold gray (distrust, guardedness, self-protection, blocking something out). It made Stiles uncomfortable to look at, so he kept wearing his glove. Through every color change up until then the mark had at least been a warm color, and the icy gray seemed completely unnatural.

His therapist didn't seem too happy when Stiles showed her his mark's new color, but she smiled tightly and said she was glad it wasn't black anymore. Stiles swung his legs as he talked for the rest of the visit and wondered what color the mark on his soulmate was, and what his therapist would think about it.

Stiles turned eleven. His mark changed color slightly, from icy gray to one with a more reddish hue. The meaning of the color was supposedly the same, but Stiles was glad for the switch back to the warm side of the color spectrum. Dad worked just as much as always, and in June it paid off with a promotion from Deputy to Beacon County Sheriff. They had a party for the first time in a long time.

By the time school started the next year, Stiles' mark had saturated to a deep, ashy red. The meaning wasn't pretty (anger, aggression, hatred), but the color itself wasn't too bad. It faded back to gray sometimes, and some days, some weeks, were black. An ugly, swampy yellow color cropped up sometimes (anxious, controlling, critical), which Stiles suspected had replaced his soulmate's original, healthy, deep indigo for a response to sadness and disappointment. But his soulmate seemed to have stabilized, at least, even if their colors weren't the best. His therapist had seemed concerned about his soulmate up until his last appointment with her in July, but there wasn't anything Stiles could do about it. He didn't like to think about it for exactly that reason. He wished that soulmarks didn't appear until you had met your soulmate and could actually do something about their emotions.

Stiles kept on wearing a glove over his mark. The colors seemed very private by then, especially since they still weren't happy colors. He shouldn't broadcast his soulmate's suffering and slow recovery. That was for Stiles alone.

The mark remained remarkably constant after that. It was black less and less over the years. By the time Stiles started high school, it was only black for a few days at the end of January, and it had even started to very occasionally briefly flicker towards the pale, warm green of delight. Those episodes lasted only seconds at a time, but Stiles was ecstatic. His soulmate was healing.

By the summer before sophomore year, Stiles' mark had saturated to a deep, sunset orange (commitment, tenacity, loyalty), only occasionally fading back to gray. It still turned that ugly swampy color sometimes, but the instances of pale green were getting longer. Stiles stopped wearing his glove. He got a few comments and stares, but nothing too negative. The few newer kids at school were shocked to find the rumors that Stiles' soulmark was a pawprint were true, but Stiles was doing pretty well in the social strata these days, so he didn't get too much trouble over it. Harley raised an eyebrow at the dramatic change in color from their elementary school days, and Scott asked why he stopped wearing the glove. Stiles just said his soulmate had been through a rough time, but he was over it now, so it was fine.

Then came a cold afternoon in early January when the mark seemed to freeze over. Stiles watched in horror as the mark faded to white over the course of a few minutes. He dug out his glove and covered up the gaping blankness on his hand as soon as he could move again. He could feel a panic attack coming on, so he closed his door and huddled in a corner until it passed, leaving him cold and trembling.

He had no idea what to do.

He peaked under the glove to make sure the mark hadn't changed back while he was panicking. It was still white as bone. Stiles slapped the glove back down, squeezing his eyes shut and concentrating on keeping his breathing even. He sat in his room trying not to panic until Dad got a call from the station, long after the sun had set.

Half a dead body in the Preserve. That should do nicely for a distraction.

Stiles got up and drove to Scott's.

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Come visit me on tumblr at moretomhardy!


	2. Handprint

_This is not exactly a sequel, but more of a companion piece from Derek's POV. I actually wrote this last year, but forgot to ever cross post over here until I got a comment asking about it the other day. Hit me up on tumblr or AO3 at moretomhardy for more reliable updates, haha._

 _There was also fun spacing in parts of this, but ffnet doesn't let you use formatting, so what can you do._

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As was typical for a werewolf pack, the Hales had a diverse collection of bite marks, animal tracks, and feathers for soulmarks. Supernatural creatures were more likely to bond with other supernatural creatures, which, while useful for supporting the idea that such unusual soulmarks were a genetic anomaly, was not very helpful for hiding one's supernatural identity from hunters. It was an old hunter's trick to look for groups of people with unusual soulmarks when on the hunt for anything "mythical."

Derek was five years old, and he didn't have a soulmark at all.

Laura got hers when she was two, a typically light teal hoofprint (restlessness) smudged over the left side of her jaw. She fretted often over her soulmate's unsettled spirit, but Derek thought she should be happy that she had a soulmark at all. Derek's mother explained over and over that he would get his soulmark soon, but after Derek turned four, she started to frown as she said it.

Derek was less and less convinced with every week that passed, and with every cousin's mark that came in while his own skin stayed stubbornly blank.

"Everyone gets a soulmark, Derek, you just have to be patient," Mom soothed the day Cora was born, tiny and pink and already with a wavering, bright orange handprint (confidence) tucked under her collarbone. (Nobody quite knew what the ghostly marks around Cora's soulmark meant, except that Cora's soulmate wasn't a human, or, at least, not quite.)

Derek wasn't persuaded. It was only him and 6-month-old Macey who were left without soulmarks in the whole entire pack. Then the next week, Macey got a set of molten gold fang marks on his arm, and while the rest of the pack worried over Macey being destined to mate with a vampire, all Derek felt was envy.

Everyone did eventually get a soulmark, even if they sometimes came in already scarred over with death, and Derek was no exception in the end. He raised a few eyebrows when he finally got a bright green handprint (curiosity) wrapped around his left hip a few months after his sixth birthday. It could be dangerous for a werewolf to have a human-shaped soulmark; it could make them too eager to integrate into human society, and too ready to trust humans implicitly. Derek didn't care. His soulmark was without a doubt the best thing to happen in his whole life.

Derek's mark was the most unstable in the pack, regularly rolling from bright teal (studiousness) to green (curiousity) to spring (enthusiasm) to yellow (joy) and back throughout any given day, sometimes within the space of an hour. Derek liked the semi-constant tingle of his mark changing colors, reminding him that it was finally there. He loved pulling up his shirt to check on it, and he loved every single color it turned, even when it washed deep indigo (sadness), or dark teal (exhaustion).

Mom worried about the fluctuating state of Derek's soulmark sometimes when it hadn't showed any signs of settling down after a few years. Derek didn't know why. The colors changed a lot, sure, but there wasn't anything wrong. Derek knew. He had checked out book after book on soulmarks from the library, and every single one of the colors was good. Even the dark ones were positive reactions to stress according to every book out there. So yeah, sometimes his soulmate really got on an emotional roll and Derek could pull up his shirt to watch his mark change colors like a kaleidoscope, but Derek liked it. His soulmate was someone completely unique, and Derek wouldn't have it any other way.

Then Derek entered high school, and suddenly soulmarks became private affairs. People with marks in obvious places got gloves or sleeves to cover them up. Laura even started wearing a patch over the pale hoofprint on her jaw. She painted the patches and called them a fashion statement, but Derek knew she was tired of people giving her funny looks for the way her soulmate seemed stuck in pastel colors and shades that screamed, "disconnected."

Derek didn't have to do anything as dramatic as that, but he did have to stop rucking his shirt up to greet a new color every time his mark shivered with a change. He tried to complain to his mother about it, but she just smiled.

"High school is when everyone's emotions start going crazy, Derek, and often in a negative way. People can feel protective of their mate's emotions. Some people are even figuring out who their mates are, and it's scary when you first realize that your emotions are out there on someone else's skin for the whole world to see, especially once you've told everyone else who your mate is. But if you want to show your soulmark, there's no one who can tell you you can't."

"Mom, are you kidding? I looked at it in class the other day and everyone looked at me like I was sick. Forrest cornered me before practice and told me I was crazy for showing off my mark like that. I hate keeping it covered."

"I know it must be hard when your mark changes so often. I remember running to the bathroom to check every time my mark changed in high school," Mom grinned, running her fingers through Derek's hair. "But there's nothing wrong with looking at your own soulmark whenever and wherever you want to unless your mate tells you they're uncomfortable with it. Until then, you can tell Forrest to mind his own business. Alright?"

Derek sighed and flopped backwards on the couch. "I don't want to become a social reject, Mom."

Two months later, Derek forced a sound out of a triangle and fell head over heels for a girl named Paige. A month after that, Derek asked his mother how she knew Dad was her soulmate. She smiled and ruffled his hair as she said, "I was in love. Ridiculously, stupidly in love. I already had a pretty good idea he was my soulmate; I knew my mark's colors and I could match his moods to my mark's changes. So I told your dad I wanted to know for sure if we were matched, asked him if he wanted to know, too. He said yes, so we stopped covering our marks. After that, it only took a couple of days. It's pretty damning to see your own emotions play out on someone else's body like that. We let it go on for a couple of weeks to make absolutely certain, and the rest is history."

Derek knew he was in love. It was harder to figure out if Paige was his soulmate since his mark changed color so often. He was never really certain what the newest fizz of sensation up his side might mean for Paige, and sometimes he wondered if her temperament really matched the riotous greens and yellows that dominated Derek's mark. She seemed so calm, certainly his mark should have more blues in it if he was hers, shouldn't it? But there was always the teal (intelligence and studiousness) that kept Derek hoping. Paige was joyful (yellow), Paige was curious (green), and Paige was enthusiastic (spring) about her music and, well, about Derek, it seemed like.

Paige's soulmark was on her forearm, and she kept it religiously covered. Derek asked once, twice, three times in the ensuing months if she would show him, but she just smiled and changed the subject, distracted him, kissed him instead. Sometimes Derek's shirt got pulled up while they were making out, but Paige always kept her eyes carefully averted and tucked Derek's shirt in for him so it wouldn't happen again. Derek offered to show her, asked her to look, nearly begged her by the end, but she would only rest her hand over Derek's mark through his shirt and say _not yet_.

That fall, Derek let Peter talk him into giving Paige the bite.

That fall, Derek killed Paige.

His soulmark remained as bright and mercurial as ever.

So that was one question answered.

Mom told everyone it was a car crash. Slick roads and an inexperienced driver.

Derek didn't tell anyone anything at all. He played a lot of basketball instead; no one bothered him when he was moving.

Derek stopped looking at his soulmark after that night. He started buying patches to cover it so he wouldn't be tempted to check on it. The itch of the changing mark nearly drove him crazy, but he figured that was the least he deserved.

A few weeks later, Derek met Kate. Derek knew Kate wasn't his soulmate, wasn't even close. Derek was pretty sure Kate didn't like him for anything except his body, but that was okay. Derek didn't want anything sweet. He gave Kate his body, and she gave him empty headspace, demanding all of his attention until there was none left to dwell on anything else. It was a good trade, as far as Derek cared.

Until Derek started caring too much. He should have expected it, seeing how he fell for Paige in a single day. Kate was… well, Derek didn't think she liked him any more than she had at the beginning. But Derek was getting pretty good at repressing emotions by now, so what was one more.

Mom was worried about Derek; hell, the whole pack was worried about Derek. Even Peter seemed worried about Derek, but Derek still couldn't stand to talk to him. Mom tried to talk to Derek, Laura tried to talk to Derek, Aunt Melanie and Uncle Lee and Aunt Grace and Morgan and James and Macey and even Cora all tried to talk to Derek.

Derek didn't say much.

Kate picked Derek up from home one day (stupid risk, Mom would be so furious if she found out about Kate), and seemed fascinated with the house. Derek told her all about the tunnels underneath, showed her a couple days later when she asked to see. She got so excited she fucked him right there on the floor of the basement, Derek straining his ears the whole time for anyone coming down the stairs (such a stupid risk, Mom would be apoplectic if she found them, but it was nice to feel _something_ , even if it was throat-clogging anxiety).

Kate asked about Derek's family a few times, and he told her about their annual reunion in January when it was a couple of weeks away.

Derek had a basketball game the night of the wolf moon. Laura stayed to watch and drive him home after while everyone else was at home getting ready for the celebration. Halfway through the game, Derek felt a sick swooping sensation in his gut. He fell to hands and knees as his vision fuzzed out for an extended second. He heard Laura scream, looked up to see her eyes boring through the haze in his vision, red as yew berries. Derek's heart stopped. He couldn't breathe. Forrest had him by the shoulders, asking if he was okay, but Derek couldn't do anything other than watch Laura scramble down the bleachers.

"Derek," Laura croaked when she got to him grabbing his arms with fingers most of the way to claws.

"I need to go home," Derek whispered with what breath was left in his lungs. Laura just stared at him, eyes back to brown and huge in her white face. Her claws dug into Derek's skin, not quite sharp enough yet to draw blood.

Forrest got his hand in Derek's hair and reminded him to breathe.

Laura snapped back to motion as Derek gulped in a shuddering breath. "Yeah, okay, let's get you home." Her voice shook as she pulled him up and out of Forrest's hands, but she was solid on her feet as Derek stumbled into her side. "Come on." She kept a strong arm around Derek's shoulders and guided his stumbling steps off the court and straight out to the car, heedless of the concerned questions coming at them from all sides.

They smelled smoke before they even got to the turnoff, and they could see the flames from the bottom of the driveway. By the time Laura skidded to a stop in front of the house it was already collapsing in on itself. Laura tore out of the car and was halfway up the sidewalk before Derek even managed to get his seatbelt off. A deputy and a fireman caught her before she could run into the fire while Derek stumbled his way out of the car. He made it two steps before he collapsed again, shaking, barely breathing, vision smudging as tears dripped down his face.

He thought he should be raging like Laura, barely holding himself in human shape, but it was all he could to do not to choke on his own gasps in the face of the hollow place in his chest where his pack used to be.

Someone dropped a jacket around Derek's shoulders as they came to crouch next to him. A deputy, Derek realized when he looked up and saw the uniform. The deputy put his arm around Derek, who listed into his chest.

"Oh, son." The deputy's voice was thick as he pulled Derek closer with his other arm. Derek buried his face in the deputy's shoulder to block the sight of the fire and the heat of the flames. His hand skated over raised flesh on the deputy's forearm, and he looked down to see a freshly scarred-over soulmark, still bumpy and an angry pink color. He fisted his hands in the deputy's uniform and tried not to shake too much against him.

Someone shouted nearby, and the deputy pulled back a little. "Son, do you think you could call your sister back?"

Derek raised his head to see Laura still fighting to get to the house, several fireman having joined the original pair trying to hold Laura back. Her shouts were getting close to roars.

Derek swallowed and tried to clear his throat. "Laura," he called, wavering and watery. She spun around immediately, red sparking in her eyes, a perfect match to the inferno behind her. Laura's whole body seemed to crumple at the sight of Derek, and she threw herself back across the yard, wrapping herself tightly around him. Derek returned her embrace with one arm; he couldn't seem to let go of the deputy with the other.

They stayed like that for several more minutes until the Sheriff approached them to express his bottled sympathies and ask them to give a statement back at the Sheriff's Department. Laura was furious again as she argued over whether she was fit to drive herself to the Sheriff's station, launching to her feet to get up in the Sheriff's face. Without Laura's support, Derek slumped back against the deputy, who gently nudged Derek to his feet and then kept him there when it became evident Derek couldn't do it on his own.

Eventually Laura allowed the deputy still holding Derek up to drive them to the police station, shoving Derek into the back seat and slamming the door viciously as she climbed in behind him. Everything was a blur after that, stumbling into the Sheriff's station after Laura, sitting on a bench by himself while the Sheriff talked to Laura first, clutching the deputy's jacket closer around his shoulders while he shook and shook.

The Sheriff came for Derek next, but Laura refused to leave the room. "He's a minor," she snarled, "and I'm his guardian now. Our parents filed all the paperwork when I turned eighteen, you can look it up yourself." The Sheriff tried to argue back, but Laura wouldn't budge.

Derek didn't have much to say, anyways. "I don't know," he repeated over and over again to the Sheriff's questions.

Frustration was thick in the Sheriff's scent when he finally herded Derek and Laura out of his office. The deputy was there again, face concerned and tired. "Do the two of you have anywhere to go?" he asked.

Laura shook her head while Derek tried to swallow passed the lump in his throat.

"Deputy Graeme has offered the use of her guest bedroom if you would like it, for however long you need." The deputy gestured to the uniformed woman standing beside him.

Laura was silent for a fraction of a second before nodding. "Thank you, Deputy, we'd appreciate that a lot."

Deputy Graeme smiled gently, and then Laura was shepherding Derek into the back of a cruiser, and then into a sparse, dusty bedroom. Derek didn't know what he was supposed to do; he was still in his basketball uniform, and he had left his change of clothes in his locker at school.

Laura told him to take off his shoes, so he did. She told him to go drink some water, so he did. She told him to get into bed, so he did. She got in next to him and curled her body around his. Derek realized that he still hadn't stopped shaking when Laura pulled him in close, her nose tucked behind his ear.

The next morning, Derek got out of bed to use the bathroom, then got back in again because he didn't know what else to do. He pushed his face into Laura's neck and tried to blink away the tears forming behind his eyelids. Laura woke with a snuffle, pushing at Derek briefly before freezing and pulling him back in.

"We've got to get out of here," she whispered after a long moment.

"Okay." Derek didn't have much of an opinion. Laura could do whatever she wanted.

"We both know that couldn't have been an accident," Laura's voice caught and broke. "The Argents set that fire, and they'll be back for us, too."

Derek stopped breathing. No. No no no. It couldn't - It couldn't be Kate. It couldn't be Derek's fault, he couldn't have killed his whole pack.

"What?" Derek croaked.

"The Argents; they're the hunters Mom was always worried about. And with good reason," Laura choked.

Derek felt like he was falling. Like he was just fucking falling, without anything to grab onto or any ground to end the dive.

"Why didn't she tell me who they were?" he managed after a long minute.

"She was waiting until you and Cora were old enough." Derek heard teardrops hitting the pillow above his head. "She told me everything when I turned eighteen."

Derek shuddered as he felt something slimy reach up and wrap itself around his heart.

Laura spent the day talking to people and making arrangements. Derek didn't get out of bed. Someone had gotten his bag for him after the game and dropped it off at the Sheriff's Department after they heard the news, and Deputy Graeme brought it in with a kind smile that afternoon.

Derek pulled out his phone and mechanically opened a message from Kate.

" _I hear two little rats escaped the trap. Don't worry, sweetheart, I'll finish the job. You know how I hate loose ends."_

Derek was shaking again. He deleted the message, along with Kate's number and everything else she had ever sent him. He curled up in the bed and cried until Laura came back that evening.

Laura hustled Derek out of bed, into his change of clothes (which still smelled like _home_ and _pack_ and Derek was crying again), and into the car, which the deputies had brought up at some point that day from the Sheriff's Department.

They were several minutes outside of Beacon Hills before Derek asked where they were going. Laura shook her head, knuckles white on the steering wheel. "I don't know," she said. "Somewhere far away from here."

Derek just nodded.

They drove aimlessly for several days, going in no clear direction, but trending eastward and south. They stayed in cheap hotels and curled up in single beds together. Laura didn't sleep much, always already awake when Derek woke from his latest nightmare, shaking and panting so quickly he could hardly breathe. Derek slept in every spare second, guilt sitting heavy between his ribs and making every waking breath a struggle to pull in.

They ended up in Amarillo after a while. The air was cold and dry, the land flat and treeless, and a couple inches of snow coated the ground. Laura seemed to like it. Derek… didn't really have an opinion.

Laura said she was going to start looking for jobs. Derek nodded and pulled the covers over his head. An unknown number with a Beacon Hills area code called while Laura was out. Derek panicked, dropped his phone in the toilet and told Laura it was an accident when she came back. You could find people with a phone number and a hunter (a hunter like _Kate_ ) would certainly know how to do that. Derek couldn't believe he hadn't thought of that sooner.

He started keeping a sharper eye out for hunters, he stopped sleeping so much, stopped sleeping almost entirely. Laura got a job at a Whataburger and started pulling all the shifts she could. She finally started sleeping, tired after long hours at work. Derek started taking long walks out in the cold, patrolling around their hotel and Laura's Whataburger for hunters. He got frostbite a few times, and the pain as he healed was grounding. The next full moon came, and Derek figured out pain was a pretty good anchor. Laura frowned at the bloody marks on his arms, but she couldn't argue with his explanation.

They stayed there for three months before Derek smelled wolfsbane on one of his walks. He ran home to tell Laura. She listened to him, grim-faced, and called their landlord. Derek packed up the few belongings they had had in the apartment they had leased while Laura invented a family emergency and promised to pay out the lease even if they didn't return. She quit her job on the same excuse, and they drove out that evening with little fuss.

They pinballed around the nation for a few weeks with no destination in mind. They didn't catch sight or scent of hunters again.

In a run-down motel in Indiana, Derek really looked at his soulmark for the first time in about ten months. It was the same bright green it had always favored most, and Derek nearly choked on a throatful of tears as he carefully set trembling fingers over it.

He stopped wearing the patch, started watching its every color change once again, the old, familiar cycle of curiosity, enthusiasm, intelligence, and joy only a little changed by time. Tired and overwhelmed (dark teal) appeared more often than Derek remembered. Some new colors cropped up from time to time, anxiety and self doubt (dirty spring green) and recklessness (cloudy, dark green) that made Derek stroke his mark and wish he could _do_ something about it. There was also protectiveness (dark gold) and energy (pale red) that made Derek feel a little lighter when they appeared. It was good to feel someone else's emotions, to get out of his own head for a few seconds now and again.

Eventually, Laura decided to settle in New York.

They got another apartment. Laura got another job and started studying for the GED. In July, Laura mentioned something about Derek going back to school. Derek recoiled at the thought (all that time sitting still, no, he didn't want to get that far into his own head), and started applying for jobs instead. Laura frowned when he told her he got one a few weeks later, but she didn't try to stop him and, more importantly, didn't try to make him go to school.

The job helped. He still had trouble sleeping, still had terrible nightmares when he managed it, and he still went for walks at one in the morning to satisfy his paranoia, but it turned out physical labor was a great way to keep his mind busy.

Laura got her GED in October, and Derek caught her looking at college applications online. He told her to go for it. He didn't make much, but he made enough to cover the rent for their tiny apartment, and they had the inheritance and the life insurance to cover tuition and groceries.

Laura got into NYU. She decided to major in social work. She got a scholarship to cover a few thousand dollars a year, and she started putting in as many hours as she could into her job to save up. That added up to a few solitary dinners a week for Derek. It was a little lonely, but he didn't have anyone else to blame but himself for that.

Derek replaced his walks with runs, covered twice as much ground or the same ground twice, depending on his mood that day. It settled him a little, to know every back alley in the neighborhood by heart.

A team of hunters passed through in March, but Derek didn't panic this time. The hunters spoke with a Boston accent so grating it couldn't be anything other than genuine, so Derek figured it was unlikely they were in league with the Argents. He stayed extra vigilant for the two weeks they were nearby and kept meticulous tabs on their whereabouts, but they moved on without causing any trouble that Derek could see.

In June, Derek got a new job working construction. It didn't pay that much more than his old job, but it got him outside. Derek liked it. He hadn't liked anything in a long time, so, that was probably a good sign. He told Laura after his first day, and she smiled at him as she stumbled her way to bed. Derek stood in the living room by himself for a while after that. It wasn't - he understood why Laura was working so much, he was happy she was going to go to college when it seemed to make her so happy, but - he missed her. He wasn't going to say anything, not when this whole thing was his fault anyways, but, he just… missed her.

It got worse after Laura actually started going to school. All the time she didn't spend in class or working part time at her job, she spent at the library studying with her classmates. She was making friends, and that was good. It just meant that Derek sat at home by himself a lot.

In October, a pack that lived nearby the NYU campus approached Laura to arrange an official meeting. Derek came along, of course, rounding out their pathetic pack of two. The other pack, the Haversmiths, invited Laura and Derek to spend time with them. Laura politely declined, too busy with work and school, but Derek was lonely, and seeing a pack for the first time in a year and a half cracked something open inside of him. He agreed almost immediately.

The Haversmith pack was not like the Hale pack. The Hales had been peaceful, keeping hunters at bay with how gentle they were, but the Haversmiths believed in fighting when threatened. Derek liked this new way. If his mother had only told him who the hunters were, he would have never never never so much as spoken to an Argent in his life, and his pack would still be alive.

The new pack was a little shocked when Derek flashed blue eyes at them for the first time. "It - it was an accident," he stumbled over his explanation to Alpha Haversmith. "She was already dying, she was in pain, and I… ended it for her." It seemed to hold up. Alpha clucked her tongue and said, "Poor little lamb," and that was the end of it.

The Haversmiths took Derek under their wing. They taught him how to fight, how to take pain and how to inflict it. The Haversmiths fought real fights, and soon Derek was joining them against rival packs and hunter clans alike. Derek learned that his blue eyes were an advantage; a threat that the pack was willing to do whatever it took to protect themselves. He learned how to disable a human without killing them. He learned werewolves could reattach body parts if they hadn't been severed for too long. He learned how to sharpen his senses until nothing escaped his notice. He learned how to heal from wolfsbane poisoning. He learned just how much 10,000 volts of electricity hurt.

Laura worried on the rare occasion she was home to catch him coming back smelling like blood or poison, but she was too busy to do anything about it and Derek liked it too much to stop on his own. The best part was that between spending all day on a job site, training with the Haversmiths on evenings and weekends, and pack emergencies at 2 AM, Derek rarely had the energy for nightmares anymore.

When the two year anniversary of the fire rolled around that January, Derek was… well, he wouldn't say he was doing _good_ , but he was definitely doing okay. He had some tentative friends in the Haversmith pack, no matter how Laura frowned about it. He kept religious tabs on his soul mark, trending more protective (dark gold) lately. He could sleep at night most of the time, and he could get out of bed in the morning.

Laura hounded him about going back to school sometimes. Derek didn't see the value in it, but she was getting more and more aggressive about wanting him to at least get a GED.

"Do you really think you're going to work construction your whole life, Derek? _That's_ what you want to do?" Laura would shout once she'd lost her patience.

"Yes," Derek would snarl right back. "I'm a werewolf, Laura, I cannot get injured and old age will barely affect me, this is the perfect job for me!"

No one ever won those arguments. They ended when Derek and Laura got tired of fighting, only to rekindle the next time Laura brought up the idea.

By the time Laura entered her final year at NYU, Derek thought he could say he was doing good. He had friends in the Haversmiths, he was doing well at his job, and he hardly ever had nightmares anymore, whether he was exhausted when he went to bed or not.

Laura graduated that December, a semester early, and the whole Haversmith pack came to watch the ceremony. Laura still wasn't close to any of the Haversmiths, content with her human friends from NYU, but they came to help Derek support his alpha-sister, and they cheered louder than anyone in the room when she walked the stage.

Laura already had a job lined up, and Derek was as proud of her as he could be. He still didn't think he would ever get a degree of any kind.

Laura warmed to the Haversmiths over the next year, able to get to know them since she was less busy with school out of the picture. She still thought they were too violent and too quick to act, and she had some uncomfortable staredowns with Alpha Haversmith when their ideals clashed, but she got along with them most of the time.

At the beginning of January the year after Laura graduated, she got a strange letter in the mail. The return address said only "Beacon Hills," and inside was a picture of a deer with a spiral carved into its side. Laura wanted to go back to California and see what it meant. Derek wanted to go with her, but Laura said no. They fought about it for hours.

Eventually, Laura said she didn't want Derek to come because he was too violent. He was too likely to fly off the handle and make the situation worse. He wouldn't be helpful, he couldn't control himself or his wolf, and his blue eyes would make any hunter they came across trigger happy. None of that was true, Derek knew. He had ironclad control over his wolf and everyone knew it. None of it was true, but it hit Derek in the heart of his insecurities exactly like Laura had wanted, and he didn't know how to respond.

Derek walked right out of their apartment. He wandered the streets until he found himself climbing the steps to Alpha Haversmith's house. He still didn't know how to explain himself, but he was shaking (again) and Alpha only needed one glance at him before she pulled him into her living room and sat him down on the couch between three other wolves. Alpha made him some tea, the Haversmith substitute for emotion, and Derek fell asleep surrounded by almost-packmates.

When he got back to their apartment the next morning, Laura was gone. Derek sat in their kitchen for a long moment feeling numb. Then he got out his laptop and booked the earliest flight he could find to Beacon Hills. The flight wasn't until the next morning, and Derek stared at the neatly printed date until he was nearly hyperventilating.

He called Alpha Haversmith, explained what had happened between flutters of too-fast breath. Alpha didn't like it, but she didn't try to stop him. Instead, she asked if Derek would let any of her betas come with him. Derek couldn't say no fast enough. He didn't know what was going on in Beacon Hills, but he couldn't be responsible for anyone else's death.

Nineteen frantic hours of _nothing_ passed until Derek was finally on the plane, and then he had to sit for six more. By the time Derek had rented a car and driven into Beacon Hills, it was two in the afternoon. Laura wasn't answering her phone, and Derek was frantic. He didn't catch her scent driving through the town with his windows down, but he knew where she would have gone; the knowledge sat like a stone in his gut. Derek clenched his jaw as he made the familiar turnoff towards the preserve, then sliced up the inside of his mouth with his fangs when he turned up the driveway.

The house hunched blackened and dilapidated as he parked in front of it, the scent of smoke and wolfsbane still sharp in the air.

Derek had to take several deep breathes and rub his eyes, hard, to get the echos of fire out of his head. He stumbled out of the car and ran into the woods. He would find Laura, and then he would deal with the breakdown looming on his horizon.

But he never really found Laura. Two hours into his search, he found… parts.

He stumbled back from Laura's glassy stare and was sick at the foot of a tree. He glanced back at her body after he finished heaving, and he… he couldn't handle it. He lurched his way back to the burnt out shell of his house instead. He hid under the stairs and just sat there, shaking, tears spilling silently down his face. This time, there was no one to offer any comfort.


End file.
